Posts Tagged ‘whippet kills groundhog’

The lawn is mowed and manicured. The only grass that rises from the soil is that lush green kind that the herbivores crave.

For over twenty years, the lawn has been mowed and the soil has brought forth this bounty. And the highways churn away on both sides of the land, and the only predators that stalk its grounds are the black feral cats that slink around property’s edge.

It is a paradise for the Monax. They are a grass-eating people who find such grounds beyond perfection. All day, they rise from the old huts in the back and undulate their fat forms on the lawn. Their rodent teeth crop at the grass. The sun shines upon their forms, and in winter, when the time of hibernation comes, they sleep soundly through the snow squalls and hard freezes, and in spring, they trundle out with their little ones.

And for these two decades, they have raise their young in this verdant land of plenty.

But one day, a change came wafting in on the late spring breezes. A good, hard rain had fallen, and the evening sun was casting its glow upon the green grass.

Any of the Monax worth their salt as grass croppers decided to wander out. This was the time to graze and grow some fat on that thick, green grass.

A soft breeze was in the air. Wind chimes some yards distant were clanging about. The cars on the highway were motoring on and on.

But in the air came the softest jingle, and the Monax didn’t know what to think of the sound. It was eerily soft, and then it would fall still. Then the sound would rise again, and the tempo would increase.

Then came the sound of running feet on the grassy ground, which matched the cadence of the jingle sound almost perfectly.

And then it came upon them, that running, whirring whiteness. It was a beast of prey, but one they had not seen before. And the Monax raced away on their stumpy legs and sowbellies.

They dived for their holes among the wood huts and along the edge of the woodland. They had never before experienced such terror before. After all, the Monax came to this land because there were no coyotes or foxes to molest them here, but now, their land had been taken over by the Great Running White Fox, who nearly hourly cast running sorties across the grounds.

But the message was not well-received among the Monax. Impetuous youth caused the young males to wander out onto the lawn in midday, testing their luck against the jingling and running whirs of death.

For nearly a week, this coterie of the young came to out into the mid-lawn, and several times, a day the Great Running White Fox was descend upon them, running hard and casting his fell jaws at at their fatty hides.

One day, a young male got the fright of his life when the beast of death ran him down, but the predator had never before killed such a creature and so was left filling the air with some wild barks while the Monax youth rose on its hindlegs and showed its teeth.

And that display was enough to make the Great Running White Fox back down.

But that would not stop the sorties, but it would not stop the bravado of youth either. It was as if both sides were unaware of what the other could do, and they were now testing the waters to see how far it all could go.

And not two days passed, when a young Monax heard the jingle, jingle and the running of feet, and decided not to run until the beast was upon him.

This time, the Great Running White Fox grabbed the young Monax and shook it violently in its jaws. On this foray, a yellow dog had come along for the sortie, but all she did was bark wildly at the Monax youth that stood to watch in horror as their comrade was shaken to death.

And so the first Monax in two decades had died at the jaws of a predator. In this case, it was a running dog, a cream and white whippet, a beast brought over from England and supremely adapted to the runs against the rabbit and the hare. The short legs of the Monax were no match for long legs of the dog.

From then on, the Monax knew to live in fear. They crept about the lawn only with great caution, for now they knew the real world of predation. They were prey, and the predator could come at any moment.

This is the way the Monax live where there are only forests and fields. The coyotes and the foxes and the farm dogs all take their toll upon the Monax. The .17 rifles take out the Monax as well.

It is only in these odd anomalies that we call “development” that predator-free paradises can exist, but they are anomalies that barely register in the history of life on this planet. Where there is vegetation, there are grazers and browsers, and where there are grazers and browsers, there are fanged beasts of prey to hunt them.

The introduction of the whippet to this artificial grassland made it oddly more wild With a domesticated killer to run the domesticated landscape, there was a sort ecological balance provided to the waves of grass.

But it an ersatz ecology to an ersatz landscape. It is only made slightly more complete with the whippet’s running feet.